Giveaway: One Year Blogoversary!!

Wow! One year ago, I took the plunge and started blogging!

I started a blog because I was following a few at the time and they all looked like they were having so much fun. They always had new, fun books to read and I loved reading reviews. I had a tough time at the end of 2012 and wanted 2013 to be better and, since this looked like a fun hobby, I jumped right in. I was originally planning to read and review my already massive TBR pile. Then, I started learning about blog tours and signed up for a few. When I realized how much fun those were, I signed up for more and my TBR pile grew larger.

I have learned some things over this year:

1. Authors are people. Very nice people, actually. They also like feedback on their books. I don't always feel that I'm qualified to give it, because if I don't like a book, I can't always pinpoint why not. I used to be too shy to even think of contacting an author and I still don't do it a lot, but am gaining more confidence as I realize they don't feel bothered to hear from fans.

2. I used to be pretty stingy with 5 star ratings. I don't feel the need to be anymore. There are lots of wonderful books out there and if I give a lot of 5 stars, I've just happened to read lots of great books in a row! I used to base my 5 stars on whether or not a book was life changing and now I just want to be entertained and enjoy a good read. I think ratings are a personal thing and everyone has their own opinion about it, so I'll just say I'm happy with the criteria I use to rate books.

3. Don't post lots of links back to Amazon or Blogger thinks it's spam and will shut down your blog. That happened to me in the middle of the year and I freaked out (kind of like I did yesterday with the Google glitch). I used to put up lots of links to free books on Amazon because I wanted to share them with everyone. Since I stopped doing that, my blog has been safe so I'm sure that was the issue. If you want free ebooks and don't know how to access them, ask me and I'll tell you.

4. Blog Tour hosts are amazing! They put a lot of work into getting books, preparing posts, excerpts, interviews, invites, etc. and make it easy to sign up and join in the fun. And those have been a lot of fun for me. I've read books I wouldn't have found any other way and some of them have turned out to be favorites of mine.

5. Publishers are also amazing! I've had the opportunity to work with a few of them and have had great experiences. They're incredibly generous and I look forward to another great year with them!

6. I will never, ever run out of books to read!!

I know I have much more to learn over this next year and in lots of ways feel like I started my blog last month! I keep my blog simple because I don't have lots of spare time to get fancy and I don't see that changing any time soon. (However, for the life of me, I cannot get my share buttons to show up on the bottom of my posts, so if anyone knows how to fix that, I would appreciate your insight.)

Now on to the good stuff, which is what you really want to hear, right? I'm going to give to one follower a $15 Amazon Gift Card as a thank you for your support. Just enter below. If you comment, please also include a link to your blog so I can follow you. If I already do follow you, still leave a link so others can check out your blog, too!

Giveaway ends 2/2/14. You must be 18 years old to enter and able to use an Amazon Gift Card. The winning entry will be verified before being awarded. The winner will be chosen through Rafflecopter. They will receive notice via email and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen.

a Rafflecopter giveaway